LAAL Posts

The Liberal Arts Action Lab has enrolled 24 students from Capital Community College and Trinity College for Fall 2018. All students will meet together in the Action Research Methods course on Monday afternoons, and also will participate on one of the four Hartford research project teams below: Food Stories Project Students will learn about the state-specific policies that shape our food system, and complete a digital storytelling project that uses personal narratives – “food stories” Read more…

We invite you to attend the Liberal Arts Action Lab digital poster fair to learn about research projects completed this semester by teams of Capital Community College and Trinity College students with Hartford community partners. Date: Monday, April 30, 2018, drop in any time between 3:00-5:30pm Location: Trinity College at 10 Constitution Plaza, Hartford CT See directions at http://commons.trincoll.edu/action-lab/transportation Enjoy light refreshments and see presentations from the following teams: Eviction Project Community Partner: Connecticut Fair Read more…

We invite students and faculty to apply to the Liberal Arts Action Lab, located at 10 Constitution Plaza in downtown Hartford. We research problems posed by Hartford community partners, and match them with teams of students and faculty from Capital Community College and Trinity College, who conduct semester-long projects to strengthen the city. Currently, we are recruiting for these Hartford research projects in Fall 2018: Traffic Safety Food Stories Opportunity Youth Home Ownership Sustainable Foods Read more…

The Liberal Arts Action Lab announces its first cohort of five research teams, which will begin working together in the Spring 2018 semester. Each team consists of a Hartford community partner, which proposed the research question, along with a faculty fellow and 3-5 students from Capital Community College and Trinity College. Together, all 20 students will participate in the LAAL 200 Action Research Methods course on Monday afternoons, then carry out their team research projects Read more…

Now that we have our list of proposed projects, we are actively recruiting Trinity and Capital students to apply to take part in the Liberal Arts Action Lab this spring. As a student in the Action Lab, you will work in teams of 4-5 to design and implement a research project that was proposed by a Hartford community group and chosen because it has the potential to improve the city.  To apply, you will fill in Read more…

When we started up the Liberal Arts Action Lab in fall 2017, one of our key goals was to invert the regular routine of urban researchers by “flipping the script.” Rather than asking academics what they wanted to study in Hartford, we invited Hartford community partners to define their “knowledge problems” as researchable questions, to help us attract and build teams of interested faculty and students from Capital Community College and Trinity College. But this Read more…

The Hartford Resident Advisory Board met in early October to review and rank the community proposals submitted to the Action Lab. The Action Lab considered 11 proposals for its inaugural cohort of projects, representing a diverse collection of organizations, projects, potential methods, and neighborhoods around the city. The Hartford Resident Advisory Board (HRAB) ranked these proposals based on whether they  help improve Hartford and lead to high-quality learning for students, as well as whether they Read more…

Got an idea about how to strengthen Hartford? We can help research the problem and offer possible solutions. The Liberal Arts Action Lab invites Hartford community partners to submit a 3-paragraph proposal on a problem or question that you’d like help answering with a team of student and faculty researchers from Capital Community College and Trinity College. We broadly define community partners as neighborhood groups, non-profit organizations, government agencies, social entrepreneurs, etc. Proposals submitted by Read more…

Fred Kass, Jack Dougherty, and Megan Brown tour the new space for the Liberal Arts Action Lab at 10 Constitution Plaza. See related news story from Trinity College.